"and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Shantih.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

The Whip Hand

The Whip Hand

Why do tigers jump through
flaming rings?They are not afraid of
the little man with the chair and the whip but they are in a cage and if they
eat him their days are numbered.And if
we complain about the cage or the man with the whip, then, like slaves, we will
surely feel the lash.If we persevere in
our intransigence, we will be disciplined.

Those are my thoughts on
monetary reality.Use the legal tender,
pay what is asked of you, and if you rock the boat then like Tim Robbins in
Shawshank, you could be cast down with the sodomites.

No one has threatened me with
anything.As far as I know, I am a free
man.I enjoy doing my duty—I work, I pay
taxes and I don’t lie or cheat but I would like to point out that for the noble
and honorable among us, the fix is in.Opportunity is currently looking for a scapegoat and if your savings or pension
promises are the only source of protein, well, the long knives are after their
feast.

Who deserves anything? Aren’t
we all sinners and fall short of the glory of God? Well sure but what does that
have to do with money? What you think you deserve you will probably not get. You
might have been planning for a Florida golf retirement after a lifetime of toil and you need a
certain amount of money for that.Perhaps too a cruise or a trip to France.Butthat was all an image in your head, something like a desert mirage. A lot of
people are angling for the same thing and there is not enough “money” to
provide it. Who after all is going to do
the work while we “retire”? So if it is time to get serious about politics,
what exactly should we ask of our overseers?A note to myself, I see that the authorities are “unsure” about the
constitutionality of eliminating American terrorists on American soil. A drone
attack on a Pakistani warlord is one thing but if neighbor Crazy Bill is the
target or I squeak too much, then that’s a different matter. Rand Paul
filibusters the Senate to protest the new CIA-chief who cannot categorically
deny that drones could be used on American citizen terrorists, however that is
defined. Police work used to involve
“arrests” (with warrants)and trials (by
jury?) but what exactly constitutes treason against the State?Is my “hope and change” subject to
misinterpretation?

Let me spell it out.The State has gradually, due to careless
decisions, worked itself into a box.It
has enjoyed dispensing the favors of royalty, it has enjoyed the trappings of
legitimacy, and it isnearing the end of
its useful life.The State wants to
determine what is done and what has importance.The rest of us are along for the ride and will be paying the bill.The State “means” well which is to say it has
an ethic of public service as long as they get to call the shots.Freedom is defined as the opportunity to do
what you are told or pay the consequences. The nub of the problem is that we
CANNOT have real Freedom if manipulation of the value of the money is allowed. If
careful stewards were to try their best to maintain and support the dual
functions of money, both as a medium of exchange AND as a store of value, then
perhaps their scrupulousness would permit our freedom.But if the government says a dollar is what the
government says it is (in short political money), then all our work and saving
is measured by a scale that can be changed at any time.The power to usurp is gradually exercised,
financial repression is instituted and eventually tends toward absolute
control.It ultimately takes more and
more money to make everyone do what they are told.

Political money can be given
or taken away.Big banks with
unfortunate losses have been subsidized with “asset purchases” by the holders
of the Aladdin’s lamp of monetary largess.Underwater homeowners are relieved of their home and large hedge funds
acquire them to rent or re-sell at a better price.Political money goes to who needs it to keep
power.The hot spring of money printing
supports the crowding, teeming LIFE that the cold outer darkness freezes
out.If the question is how little you
can pay a man and still get work out of him it is wise to remember that they do
shoot horses when the maintenance costs get high.I may be stupid enough to work for a carrot
but I am not stupid enough to continue to plod after a carrot on a stick
dangling 3 inches off my nose. So who to vote for in this multiple theatre of
charades?

The rightful definition of a citizen is a
participant in the choices that the government needs to make. Money and votes
are a citizens two tools to impact TPTB.The last refuge is “doing your own thing”. Opting out. Voting has long since become meaningless. The duty is flogged mercilessly but barely half the electorate makes it to a major decision. When the vote is local--the voting participation falls below 20%. And if the government can create all the money it wants or needs, why do I need to pay taxes? The government looks bad creating its own money and our overseers need "buy in" to the system that allows them to gain control of incentives and permit their oversight. Everybody needs to be on their little treadmills generating wherewithal(taxes) and allegiance (loyalty) to the State. Are we free? Any thoughtful observer when asked about freedom necessarily must mention obligation. As in rights have responsibilities. We have this idea that our freedom allows us to consent to the oversight of the state but practically the state assumes it. There is no other state so you have consented to this one.

Well, I don’t need any more monopoly money
for my pretend retirement.I am trying
to figure out the “best” investments in an environment where the rules can be changed at any time. Many countries' citizens have coped with their governments malfeasance by using dollars as a store of value: Argentina, Venezuela, Ukraine, Nigeria, and others. Now we Americans have a similar but more difficult problem--there is not another fiat currency that is any BETTER than ours. How to navigate safely over the cataract
that is coming is a knotty problem. I'll speak about that later. The world we have is not where we are
going.I would have to say the hippies
of the 60’s were a little early.All of
their utopias blew up on the failures of human nature especially when
confronted with the blandishments of a wanton culture.And we are still living the dream but are
getting closer to awakening.In the 70’s
I was grabbed by the ideas of the neo-Malthusians:Ehrlich and Lester Brown.I internalized the concerns of limits to
growth, propounded the lessons of Earth Day, railed against militarism in
Vietnam, admired Seymour Melman in his argument for a 75% reduction in the
Defense Department to invest in social capital rather than destruction, and
contemplated alternative development strategies to bring greater justice to
desperately poor 4th world countries.As a world community, we needed some
sacrifice by the rich to create the conditions for the poor.In my mind Reagan’s jingoism blew all that
out the window.We were in it for
us.We Americans werethe exceptional free people and had a God
given right to grow as rich as possible and everybody else could come along if
they could. The neo-Malthusians have been around a long time and are
just the sort of do-gooder scolds you can really believe in but a funny thing
happened on the road to Apocalypse Now—we learned how to print money and
sprinkle it on every asset so that now we could no more say what a horse is
worth than why a dollar buys anything at all.

And as for my kids and their choices:they are walking in two worlds—the world of
their parents and grandparents and the collapsing future. There is the world of progress and a belief in a technological
future but I think they need to be prepared for a resource constrained future of contraction and a slow slide to
de-industrialization. What will it be? Onward and upward or systemic and cascading failures due to resource limits, population pressures, and financial criminality. The rich got theirs but we middle class sods are pack mules on the Oregon trail to nowhere.

What can the young people do? They are ready to work but leadership needs to put them to their task. College is a dangerous investment. Fun, but costly and potentially lethal. Those loans cannot be shucked in bankruptcy and what about the real return? I still think it wise to go to college even
though there are precious few jobs worth pursuing.You could chase aeronautical engineering, or
architecture, or genomic counseling and still end up thousands of dollars in debt and 10th
in line for an interview.So though I would
recommend going to college, you need to think, really think (and talk to class-mates)
about the future.Read a lot of great
books, make a lot of intelligent friends, get a “peer group” you trust, and
then sally forth into the blast furnace of reality.Don’t spend too much and don’t party too
much.Learn what is worth knowing and
then get busy—no one said adulthood was easy.That’s why in the insect world it’s the last stage.

We really don’t know what kind of mixed up
social order we are going to brew up as the high priced escapades become
unaffordable and only the 1% are in a hurry to catch a plane.Is the capital we have at all useful?What are we going to do with a tanning salon,
or a big box outlet with empty shelves-repurpose it as a homeless shelter with
hammocks? What is the average miles travelled for every item in Walmart—8,000?
Or what about your neighborhood grocery store – 1,000 miles?Does any of this work with gas going up or becoming as expensive here as it is in Europe?Perhaps it might be a few years before that
uncomfortable day but remind me again of the date that fracking will make the
USA a net EXPORTER of fuel? We still IMPORT 50% of our energy. I believe
our last year as an energy EXPORTER was in the mid-50’s.

We have some mighty careless leadership. My own belief is that they are grabbing what they can and want to tiptoe around all the problems until they crash on the unsuspecting. Please, don't let IT happen on my watch. Just like the dumbfounded Bush--"this sucker could go down". Yes, Virginia. IT could happen. But even if the interlocking global world financial system doesn't pancake like a World Trade Center tower, it is on the Darwin short list. Big changes are coming and we will see who or what holds "the whip hand".